Einstein and the Incredible Hulk Now Have Their Own Constellations (But You’ll Never See Them)

For thousands of years, humans have looked up at the stars and ordered them into constellations: the Hulk … the TARDIS … Schrödinger’s cat. Not familiar with these? That’s probably because you can’t see them without a gamma-ray telescope — and also, NASA just invented them.

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury blasted off on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou at 01:45:28 GMT on 20 October on its exciting mission to study the mysteries of the Solar System’s innermost planet. Signals from the spacecraft, received at ESA’s control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via the New Norcia ground tracking station at 02:21 GMT confirmed that the launch was successful.

BepiColombo Spacecraft Launch on 7-Year Trek to Mercury for Europe and Japan

A joint European-Japanese mission to the tiniest planet, Mercury, blasted off from French Guiana on its long journey tonight (Oct. 19, Oct. 20 GMT).

That mission, BepiColombo, will spend seven years cruising toward its target, where it will separate into two spacecraft and orbit Mercury for a year — or two, if the mission is extended. The measurements taken there could not only solve lingering mysteries about the innermost planet, but also about the formation of our solar system and neighboring ones. The whole mission cost the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) almost $2 billion, according to press reports.

BepiColombo’s Path: Why Does It Take So Long to Get to Mercury?

The European and Japanese space agencies launched their first mission to Mercury yesterday (Oct. 19, Oct. 20 GMT), but now, the mission’s engineers and admirers have to endure a seven-year wait before the project’s science begins in earnest. The BepiColombo mission has such a long cruise time because it’s actually really difficult to successfully orbit our tiniest planetary neighbor. It’s so difficult that it took until 1985 before an engineer figured out any way to make the orbital trajectories work out properly. The problem arises because Mercury is so small and so close to the sun.

BepiColombo’s beginning ends

A stunning early morning launch lifted the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft into space on Saturday, 20 October. This marked the start of intensive, round-the-clock flight control activities to ensure the mission’s health and functioning in the harsh environment of space. At 13:45CEST on Monday 22 October, just 58 hours into its mission, the critical first segment of the fledgeling satellite’s long voyage to Mercury was wrapped up, as teams at ESA’s mission control centre declared the critical ‘launch and early orbit phase’ complete. The end of the beginning now beckons months of extensive in-orbit commissioning activities, in which operations teams will work extended hours daily until the end of December, performing tests to ensure the health of BepiColombo’s science instruments, its propulsion and other systems.

What It Felt Like to Be Aboard the Failed Rocket Launch to the Space Station

Everything was going smoothly — until NASA astronaut Nick Hague felt a sudden tremor. „The first thing I really noticed was being shaken pretty violently side to side,“ he said during his first publicly broadcast interviewssince his Soyuz rocket failed shortly after liftoff on Oct. 11. The rocket was meant to carry Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to the International Space Station in what would have been the American’s first trip to space. Instead, the pair’s emergency rescue system kicked into action after a problem during booster separation.

The next set of crewmembers should launch toward the International Space Station in December, despite the failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket earlier this month, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said. That failure occurred Oct. 11, causing the Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan just minutes after liftoff. The investigation into the incident has been productive, and the Soyuz rocket likely won’t be grounded for too much longer, Bridenstine said today (Oct. 23) during a meeting of the U.S. National Space Council in Washington, D.C.

„We have a really, really good idea of what the issue is,“ Bridenstine said. „We are getting very close to understanding it even better so that we can confidently launch again.“ [In Photos: Space Crew’s Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Failure]

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, initial report from its investigation into the failed Oct. 11 Soyuz crew launch should be complete by the end of this week, the agency announced in a statement released yesterday (Oct. 17). The agency’s head of human spaceflight, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, also said in a news conference yesterday that Roscosmos will not launch another crewed flight until three uncrewed launches are successful and the investigation’s findings have been addressed. The Oct. 11 launch was aborted a couple minutes after liftoff because of an issue with booster separation, sending the two astronauts on board plummeting back to Earth.

Soyuz Launcher Recovery Plan Starts To Emerge

„Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos will carry out three unmanned launches by the end of the year before the next manned mission will be put in space, Roscosmos’s executive director for manned space programs, Sergei Krikalyov, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Tiny German Spacecraft Poised for Hopping Landing on Asteroid Ryugu

A tiny German asteroid lander is expected to touch down on its target late Tuesday, Oct. 2 (EDT). The craft is on a quest to send back data about the mysterious Ryugu’s surface, whose precise composition continues to elude investigators more than three months after the Japanese Hayabusa2, which will deliver MASCOT to the surface, arrived at the space rock.

Japanese Probe Drops Hopping, Shoebox-Sized Lander on Asteroid Ryugu

ESA & Japan: BepiColombo Mission to Mercury / Merkur

ESA Science & Technology: BepiColombo’s journey to Mercury

This animation is based on a launch date of 5 October, marking the start of the launch window in October 2018. It illustrates the gravity assist flybys that the spacecraft will make at Earth, Venus and Mercury before arriving at Mercury in December 2025.

ESA Science & Technology: Mission Operations – Getting to Mercury

The Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) is ESA’s scientific contribution to the mission. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is providing the other science spacecraft, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). ESA is also building the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which will carry the two orbiters to their destination, and the MMO Sunshield and Interface Structure (MOSIF), which provides thermal protection and the mechanical and electrical interfaces for the MMO.

JAXA | „BepiColombo“ Launch Schedule Change

Though Ariane 5 launch with BepiColombo mission explorers aboard was originally scheduled for 10:45 p.m., October 18, (local time in French Guinea) 2018, due to schedule adjustments the launch has moved later as follows:

Front Page / Titelseite

On 6 March 2018, the BepiColombo engineering model was delivered to ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.BepiColombo – ESA’s first mission to Mercury – is based on two spacecraft: the ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter, with 11 experiments and instruments, and the Japanese sp…

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury passed a review milestone last week, confirming that it can leave Europe and begin preparations for launch at the Kourou spaceport.The spacecraft and ground equipment, along with personnel, will start transferring to Kourou towards the end of next month.…

„The only problem is, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had dismissed Swarm’s application for its experimental satellites a month earlier, on safety grounds. The FCC is responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the chance of accidents in space. It feared that…

Engineers removed the combined optics and science instruments of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope from their shipping container in a high bay at Northrop Grumman on March 8, signaling the next step in the observatory’s integration and testing.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) declared Friday that it would start to make preparations for a new flagship X-ray space observatory for the research of black holes, neutron stars and quark stars.

​China’s latest lunar probe, the Chang’e-4, is expected to land on the far side of the Moon on the second half this year in what is to be the first soft landing on the dark side of the moon in the history of space flight.